


skate park

by niiiiix



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bisexual Dave Strider, First Kiss, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Oblivious John Egbert, Oneshot, SO, Skating, and theyre. underage, dave strider is a mess, ok, ok actual tags, skate park, the underage tag is because there’s alcohol, they arent emo i promise, they just, uhh ive never actually had alcohol so i didn’t try to like describe how it felt, wanted to skate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25784923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niiiiix/pseuds/niiiiix
Summary: Dave and John go to a skate park. It’s after dark and John can HARDLY figure out how to work the damn thing, but the boys work that- and more- out.
Relationships: John Egbert/Dave Strider
Kudos: 43





	skate park

**Author's Note:**

> this is adapted from another fandom. the reddie version is also on my page if you want to see it.

Dave has a skateboard in his garage. He uses it, from time to time, although it’s usually just when his bike breaks down, or at one of his friends’ houses and he has to go get it. He much prefers his bike, however. He feels a bit like a poser. He doesn’t wear the lame, ripped clothes other skaters do, and he could hardly pull off a kickflip without falling on his ass.   
  
He could navigate the speed and balance well enough to teach it, though, even if the student was reluctant.  
  
“I don’t know, Dave, this seems like an awful idea. I’m not even going to get started on all the potential injuries we could get, because I’m sure that you’ve received them all already on your own. Do you wear a helmet? Do you even own one?” John complains, bringing up a fair point as he leans against the door frame of his front door, which Dave chose to knock on at the ripe, late, late, time of ten p.m.  
  
Dave scoffs as he pulls a hand through his hair, his head almost five inches taller than John’s, even with the disadvantage of the porch steps. “Oh, dude. There’s no need to get hung up on details. All you need to know is that you’re coming with me to the skate park-”  
  
“After it’s legally closed?”  
  
“Yes, obviously, it’s past nine, J, keep up.” John rolls his eyes as Dave continues. “Anyway, you’re coming with me, and you’re gonna suck so much and I’m going to be fantastic and we’ll have a great time.” Dave beams under the yellow, burnt out streetlight. John bites on his top lip like he always does whenever he has to pretend he doesn’t want to go along with whatever shenanigans Dave plans.  
  
“Fine.” He decides, crossing his arms and tilting his jaw up as though he has some sort of ultimatum over Dave.   
  
Dave just smiles, a tiny little thing. “Cool.”  
______  
  
“Alright, so, you’re going to put your foot there,” Dave says, containing a laugh at John’s complete inability. He’s tried three times already, each time the board has slipped out from underneath him. It’s a miracle he hasn’t fallen, really. “I’m telling you, you just have to do it.”   
  
John furrows his brow, and Dave can tell his eyes are narrowed, even under the harsh shadows that mask half of his face. “And what the hell does that mean? How do you just do something?” He asks, his tone sharp and snappy. If anybody else had heard, they would have seen it as an attack, an instigation. But Dave merely grinned, holding his tongue between his teeth. It might have been an instigation, sure, but he would take it as a challenge.   
  
“Just hop on it!” John’s mouth opens in objection before Dave continues. “That’s what I said to your mom last night! No, but seriously, it’s easier if you just jump on it, all at once. If you go too slow, your balance goes all out of whack.” His tone sobering soon after the joke.  
  
John pinches his lips together. “I can’t! I’ll fall. I’ve got awful balance.”  
  
“Here.” Dave says, holding out his hand. He pushes his glasses up his nose with his other hand, shoving it between his elbow and his ribcage.  
  
John says nothing, looking back from his hand to his eyes. Over and over, until, “Fine.”   
  
“What?” He says, sounding more shocked than he thought he would have. He offered his hand to John, he shouldn’t be shocked if he takes it. It’s just for balance, really. It’s not like he offered anything actually important to him. Just his hand and his palms and his balance and his trust-  
  
“Fine. Give me your hand, dickwad, I want to learn how to do this.” He sputters, waving out his hand and stepping over the skateboard until Dave grabs his hand, and John squeezes it way too tight.   
  
That’s how Dave had imagined touching John- out of impulses and electrocution. He held his hand, and although the end goal was John’s safety, it was only ensuring Dave’s destruction. His palm wasn’t soft, it was rough and dry, bandaids and hand sanitizer. He didn’t feel ‘tingles and tickles’ like he’d read in some stupid novel, he felt bee stings and papercuts. And he couldn’t get enough of it.  
  
It was John, there, in his hand, and there, on his board, and Dave doesn’t think he’s going to let go until he’s fully confident in his ability to ride. Which, based off of how long it took him to ride a bike, would take a while. It didn’t matter- midnight at a skatepark felt like all the time in the world.  
  
_____  
  
Dave’s laugh was loud, raucous, even. John decides its echo has to carry on past the park. Past the fencing, through the streets and into homes, spreading his infectious laughter, carrying his happiness through to people he’d never even know. He refused to believe the universe could have just given such a gift to somebody and let him keep it all for himself. It had to float through the air, run through the rivers, fly through the clouds so that everybody felt it. Maybe Dave’s laugh was the only thing keeping Earth from total destruction.  
  
And then John looks at himself, watching Dave’s bouncing jaw, and realizes that the whole idea is just a bit preposterous. Dave could manage it anyway, He thinks, watching Dave fly by after a mishap. Dave could do anything.  
  
Except, maybe, teach John how to freaking turn. He’d gotten a handle on going straight forward, he didn’t even need Dave’s shoulder for that anymore. And he’s found that running starts, somehow, came easier to him than standard ones. But he always had to beckon Dave over if he wanted to try turning.  
  
And he would be lying if he said that he wasn’t just a bit distracted with the way Dave’s hand clamped on John’s waist, like he’d whisk him off at the first sight of danger. He attention was only minorly pulled away from the moving vehicle he was on when Dave pulled him in for turns, furrowing his brow and pulling in his bottom lip as if he’d never turned before, as if the danger was too great for his full attention to be anywhere else.  
  
John loved that- that Dave was so damn worried about his safety because he knew about his anxieties, even if he played it off later as wanting to save his board, rather than the ‘wet muskrat’ riding it. It was almost intoxicating, and John could have been drunk off that alone if Dave hadn’t already taken care of it.  
  
“Dun da da dun!” Dave says, poorly mimicking a trumpet after a couple hours, and after John completes a turn in both directions all on his own.  
  
John rolls his eyes and picks up the board. “What are you doing, you dumbass?”  
  
Dave grins a grin that must raise the sun, that makes the birds sing and the crickets chirp. “I have a reward for you! For doing so great on the skateboard, and greatly surpassing my expectations for you with your quick wits,” He says, tossing a wink in his direction.   
  
John is grateful that the lights wash him out, because he can feel his ears go warm, and he knows that in any other lighting, they’d be very pink. He watches Dave fish something out of his pocket. He holds it up triumphantly in the dark sky, the yellow street light reflecting off of it and shooting a glare into his eyes. “What is that?” He asks the metal… pouch.  
  
“My very own invention. I call it the vodka-sun. I took one of those medicine injection thingys, put vodka in it, and injected it into the capri-sun.” He smiles like it’s an achievement.  
  
“Christ, Dave.” He scoffs like it’s a chore. “Is that what you think those are for?”  
  
He waves it toward John, taking a step forward and ignoring his comment. “You want to try?”  
  
John bites his top lip again.   
  
“There better still be straws.”  
  
“Of course there are straws, J, I’m not a monster.”  
  
_____  
  
“How many of these did you make?” John asks, fighting a hiccup. He’s just finished his third ‘vodka-sun’, which was surprisingly not terrible. It was the apple flavor, and that was his favorite. (He wonders if Dave knew that…)   
  
The skateboard was upturned, a few feet away, and John was stripped of all of his protective gear, knee pads, elbow pads and helmet neatly stacked to the side. He was sitting on the ground a few feet from Dave, twisted in a strangely inaccurate criss-cross-applesauce, while Dave sat above him on a railing, his feet dangling to either side of John.  
  
Dave counts, putting up and pulling down fingers in what appears to be no particular pattern. “Three-two. Wait, no, six. So this is the last one.” He says, waving his half-empty pouch in the air.  
  
“Ah, guess I’m cut off. All done for tonight.” John says, gathering his trash.  
  
“You can have mine.” Dave offers, louder than the rest of the town. The city’s still, it’s almost two in the morning. He’s awoken the birds, he’s the reason the frogs are running their mouths so early.  
  
John’s still, too. “Yeah?”  
  
Dave nods, his glasses shaking wildly. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes, of course you can always.” He doesn’t hold out the pouch, though. It’s there, in his hand, in his lap. On the rail, and out of John’s reach.   
  
So John stands up. “Yeah. Thanks, Dave.” He reaches for the vodka-sun in his lap and takes it.  
  
And leaves his hand there.  
  
And looks Dave in the eyes. In his eyes, the ones that bring everything to life, the ones that bring any sort of hope to this dull town. The whites of his eyes that were always wide, displaying his every emotion to an audience. The irises are so complex, they aren’t just one color. They’re gold, and green, blue and silver. Every color mixed together, because everything was complex with Dave goddamn Strider. Even the way his pupils dilated, then looked from John’s eyes, to his lips, to his eyes, to his lips, and his cheek, and the rising colors in them.  
  
He leaves his hand on his lap, the other grabbing at the nape of his neck and pulling him close. Dave’s breath is hot on his mouth, sour with alcohol but fruity with the stupid kids drink. Complex and livening. His nose is too big next to John’s, poking into his cheekbone. His shades’ frames, the dumb fucking glasses, darken everything in his eyes tenfold. The excitement and the confusion, the familiarity and the need.  
  
The impulse. The electricity.  
  
“Joh-”  
  
And John’s kissing him. With power, with force. With care and respect for the boy that brings everything to life. With one hand around his neck and one on his jaw, pulling him closer. Alcohol on his tongue and buzzing through his head, maintaining a constant stream of Dave, Dave, Dave in his mind.   
  
“John.” Dave says, his voice so steady, as though he’d never been more sure of anything before. When they broke, his lips were slick with spit and seething with warmth, sending shivers down John’s neck. _No_ , he thought drunkenly, _That’s the exact wrong temperature._  
  
He smiles into Dave’s jaw, leaning on him despite both of them knowing how flimsy his seating was. “So long, Dave.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“So long.” He repeats, deeming clarification unnecessary. Dave’s hands wrap around his back and they stay there until the city hums to life, livened by the pair.   
  
At least, that’s what John likes to think.  



End file.
